The hot dog is gone. Its soiled paper tray remains in my left hand, bits of ketchup- and mustard-smothered sauerkraut stuck to the bottom. In my right hand, a beer. Somewhere near my feet sits the mitt I had brought for a laugh but quickly realized may become important to our safety, but the mitt doesn’t matter now. It’s the bottom of the ninth, our top Major League prospect takes a short lead from third, the potential winning run shuffles around at first, hulking Trevor Mitsui comes to home plate with a chance to tie or win the game, and all 3,220 of us at Ron Tonkin Field are on our feet. So how am I supposed to cheer with this gnarly plate in one hand and full drink in the other? Is that a shred of cabbage floating in my beer? Is my entire face covered in mustard? Did that man just turn his son’s shoulders so he’d stop staring at me? Jesus. What have I done to that dog?
###
I can’t say for certain what the owners of Main Street Marijuana had in mind when they named their little shop, but if their intent was to illustrate just how normal the purchase and consumption of pot is quickly becoming, they’ve nailed it.
When I approached Mike about writing a baseball piece for Pot Dads, the allure was partly to experience purchasing marijuana as a public, legal exercise. I was of two minds before I stepped foot into the place: on one hand, legal acceptance of weed has seemed to open up all kinds of innovation, not to mention the expectation that what you purchase will be of a certain quality and consistency (which, as anyone who’s taken that extra nibble from a special brownie only to find their body nailed to the ground wondering if they’ll ever get their mind back will tell you, is a good development). On the other hand, I was wary of losing the clandestine edge that is integral to my relationship with the stuff.
Walking past the benign bouncer at Main Street — a woman of a certain age wearing a brand new white t-shirt and the glassy expression of a person who’s no longer registering faces — I was struck by the overwhelming banality of it all. Glass display cases set up like a mall jewelry store; paper menus listing variety, producer, potency, etc.; and scores of regular Joes and Janes who may as well have been lifted out of the local Safeway and plopped down in this little storefront to buy, in front of God and everybody, this now-unforbidden fruit.
It took me a few minutes to understand the purchasing process amid the throng. I’d traded in the paranoia of getting ripped off or arrested for a more existential variety of fear: embarrassment. I had no idea what to do. Why hadn’t I done my research? Why hadn’t I asked somebody how to act? What’s my first move? And how could a purchase flow designed for stoners seem so difficult? The last thing I wanted to do was get all flustered and leave here with the wrong stuff, kinda like I do every time I try to buy pants.
I loitered at the fringe for a bit, hoping not to get noticed or called on. It felt a bit like buying beer with a real ID after having faked it so many times you don’t know what confidence should look like. I avoided all eye contact.
After a few laps around the glass cases I got a lay of the land. There were tiny pipes and novelties, add-ons and unrecognizable objects. A whole mess of impulse options not unlike the candy rack at the supermarket checkout. People held numbered flags and waited to pay cash. A small window produced goodies. Fine. Get past the noise and distraction and it couldn’t be that hard. Let’s do this.
Turns out the young guy that helped me couldn’t have been kinder or less stress-inducing. I’m not sure why I had conjured up a Weed Nazi in my imagination, but when I stammered and asked for a little help he responded not with a stern “No gummies for you!” but with a very helpful description of the different highs I should expect from the different products I was considering. He did everything short of offer me a sample.
So I got out of there with my little brown bag holding two specially requested grams for my ballgame companion and a package of 10mg lozenges that we’d be gobbling down in a matter of hours.
###
Since I am now an actual Pot Dad with an actual kid who actually needs me to stay safe and sound, we’d decided not to drive to the ballpark. Enter public transportation. Notwithstanding the absurd 1.75 hour travel time predicted by Google, we agreed that taking MAX to a bus and then walking the rest of the way to Ron Tonkin field in Hillsboro was the way to go.
The first problem? Quatama Station sounds and looks an awful lot like Orenco Station, especially when you’re at stop #13 or #14 and only partially paying attention anymore. The landscape sort of evens out past 200th Ave. Multiplexes. Bulldozed lots. Fresh traffic lights. So when S says “Hey I think this is our stop” moments before the train doors close, you hop off.
Now, one thing about edible marijuana is that you don’t always know how stoned you are, as if the proverbial frog had found himself in a bubbling bong rather than a boiling pot. That’s the root cause behind many of the aforementioned “Oh shit I ate too much and now I’m plastered to the floor” moments, and even with regulated, measured doses there’s a kind of slow swell of intoxication that can take anywhere from half an hour to several hours to kick in. S and I had both taken a second lozenge (he a full, I a half) on the train as we got closer to the station, throwing caution to the wind. So, yes. Quatama. That’s our station.
Except it wasn’t. The train closed up behind us and we realized we were one very long stop and about a hundred avenues away from our destination. Descending toward deeply stoned. Hungry. Disoriented. And first pitch is coming up, well, ten minutes ago.
###
Earlier this year, I stumbled on some photos from a stock image campaign whose intention was to show normal people enjoying marijuana in the privacy of their homes as a way of enhancing the other little things you’d do with friends on, say, a Wednesday evening. Enjoying a plate of cheese and crackers? Break out the pipe. Frying up some delicious red peppers one sliver at a time? Pass the joint. Pretending to care what your wife’s reading or talking about or journaling or whatever in bed next to you? Better pack the bubbler. The series was hilarious for all the reasons stock photography is usually hilarious—including the full-court press of diversity — but in the end the images left me feeling a strange sense that specialness was starting to disappear from the act of getting high. I mean, these people were involved in things that are, by design, completely boring. “Look,” the images seemed to say, “you don’t have to be interesting or do interesting things to enjoy getting high. Just go about your business and throw a spliff into the mix.”
It’s brilliant. I mean, here I am writing an article for Pot Dads, a publication whose very name evokes the banality and safety of getting high on the American West Coast circa 2015. All at once, from every corner of society, the message is that weed isn’t and probably never should have been considered anything more sinister than alcohol’s sleepy, peaceful, munchy cousin.
###
When we arrived at the Tonkin Field gates after circling for what seemed like an hour in the minivan of our septuagenarian Uber driver, I realized I’d forgotten to hide the lozenges that were pretty much the only thing in my backpack other than a mitt. It was too late to get out of the very short line without drawing undue attention to ourselves, so I handed over the bag while trying to simultaneously look helpful, unsuspicious, not-stoned, and excited about the game. When he got to the brown bag in which the good people at Main Street had packed my erstwhile contraband, he asked what was inside.
“Lozenges,” I said. It was the first and only thing that came to mind. In fact, I didn’t even know if I could get in trouble for having these on me. What was the worst they could do? Certainly they could confiscate my goods, but it was only about ten bucks worth and anyway I wasn’t about to consume any more that night. Could they have refused us passage? I’m sure a family-friendly baseball stadium, like any public venue, reserves the right to deny entry to anyone, and I sure as hell didn’t want to have made that 2+ hour trek all the way out here for nothing.
“Oh. OK,” he said. No further questions. We were in.
Being a AA team parked a considerable distance from city center, Tonkin is by its nature a relatively small development. It contains a mere 3,500 seats in a semi-circle that wraps the first base line, around home, and up around third. Every seat is close to the action. Which is a wonderful thing…until a foul ball comes whipping past the netting. I notice a little sign:
“BE ALERT FOR FLYING OBJECTS.”
I’ll say. Notice the man to the right of this photo, looking at something out of frame. Whatever he’s looking at, it sure isn’t the batter, who is about three seconds from checking his swing and sending a baseball spinning into the stands at a cool 90+ MPH. If you squint you can see the vertical strip of black rope that marks the far end of Tonkin’s protective netting. You’re basically a ballboy with access to alcohol in these seats.
“Check out those dents,” an usher tells me after we get talking about the constant threat of foul balls. He’s pointing at the aluminum siding that adorns the concession area — gray metal that’s pocked like a moonscape.
“These puppies come in hot.”
I pull the mitt out of my backpack, make a mental note to keep my eyes on the game at all times, and sidle towards my seat. S is laughing at the absurdly meagre protections for fans, and his laughter turns a little more nervous as several foul balls zip over the heads of spectators facing away from the fields in the concourse, not really noticing that they were about 3° of bat angle away from having a ball smash into the backs of their heads. How does nobody get sent to the hospital during these games?
“I’m not sure, really,” the usher tells us. He stands at the top of an aisle that leads to the nicer, closer seats, holding a sign that says Please wait for a break in the action and keeping people from walking in front of other fans during an at bat. It’s a duty that would have him facing away from the action himself, but he stands sideways to the path in order to simultaneously prevent people from passing and to keep an eye on any fouls that come his way.
###
Getting high is still an occasional indulgence because it allows me to see the normal in an abnormal way. That tiny pinprick in reality opens for a few hazy moments and the possibility of something truly strange wriggles through. I’m no longer interested in getting so stoned that I lay on a carpeted living room floor while extra terrestrials examine my supine body under alien bulbs (this happened) or crawl through a simple hedge thinking I’ve gotten myself trapped in an endless thicket, only to emerge in a neighbor’s yard with nothing but dirt and scratches to show for my grand exploration (also happened). But I do enjoy the suspension of what is in favor of what might have been.
I’m talking about that moment you’re walking down an alleyway and you see a footpath that comes seemingly out of nowhere and leads to — Eureka! — a little wooden playground that has been abandoned and disused for generations. You push aside the overgrowth and walk into this wonderfully strange space, a bit of moonlight casting delicate shadows on the wood chips. It’s enchanting, in a way, and for a moment you don’t have to face the reality that what you’ve stumbled upon is actually a heavily used diversion for the children of overworked Intel employees who drag them to the on-site daycare because they are thousands of miles from family and thousands of dollars from making private daycare payments. That’s for tomorrow. That’s for sober assessment. Tonight you’ve found a wrinkle in the design and this forgotten little playground is truly a relic from another time.
###
I look over at S to see how he’s doing. I’d gotten a dog for him as well, but I hadn’t slathered it as aggressively with condiments and anyway he’s much better at holding his shit together than I am. If he were to look back at me in horror, I would know something was actually wrong with my face and my behavior. And my entire existence, if you get right down to it.
S flashes me a “Hey, this is fun. Base hit right here and we walk off winners,” rather than “Hey, why did you eat that hot dog like a seal eating a herring at the zoo?” I am genuinely relieved, since I cannot remember the process by which I consumed that thing. All I can recall are flashes of it coming closer to my face at strange angles followed by the difficulty of chewing what I’d committed to. Also, of trying to hide my face from S the whole time. But we’re cool. Take a mellow sip and focus, man. Focus.
It’s the ninth inning of an exciting, eventful game and the crowd is way into it. We’ve had a few blown calls, a manager ejection, excellent defense, and now the chance for a walk-off win during the team’s hunt for a second league championship in a row. (Update: your Hillsboro Hops are repeat champs!) At times the game has had the feel of a pro wrestling match, with the fans cheering more for extracurricular activities (arguments, fumbled grounders) than subtle baseball plays (sacrifice bunts, a hit-and-run). The excitable man next to me seems to have shown up solo and we chat throughout the game despite the fact that I keep scribbling nonsense like “MacGyver” and “Bus rides” into the tiny notepad I’m surreptitiously keeping and he’s surreptitiously glancing at. At one point a woman behind us lands on a pet name for the first base umpire and leans into him mercilessly. “Come on, Frank, my grandma has better eyes than you.” And “It’s OK, Frank. You’ll get the next one.” It was great.
###
Mitsui hits a line drive into left field hard enough for the ball to carom irregularly off the fence and give the winning run ample time to fly around the bases and score.
I drop my paper plate and set down my beer as the play develops, ready to celebrate with everyone around me. People are going nuts, even those of us who probably couldn’t have named a single player before showing up tonight.
With the game won and the field clearing out, things start moving pretty fast. All of a sudden it dawns on us that we have to clear out. Show’s over. S had been shrewd enough to buy back-up beers in the 7th inning before last call and I still have that full one plus what’s left of this one, so we raise our glasses time and again to give pretext to our aggressive chugging. Ushers start coming around. Play is quickly turning to work, and every moment we stand there reveling in the seats is another moment the crew is not home. The back-up beers disappear.
OK.
Now how the hell do we get home?
###
In a few days, no fewer than five legal marijuana dispensaries will open within walking distance of my house. Most of them will be impeccable, heavily branded, and unremarkable. My daughter will grow up thinking that shops selling weed are no biggie. Ho-hum. There’s a Plaid Pantry, there’s a pizza joint, there’s the place you buy insanely potent marijuana. And in theory, I’m happy about that. When she’s old enough to start looking for ways to alter her consciousness, I think I’d rather she steal a joint from her old man than raid the liquor cabinet as I first did.
What I can’t figure out is whether the demystification of weed will materially change the experience of getting high. Snooping around, seeking out strange places, experiencing well-known haunts with a new bent: these were all integral to my relationship with getting high, and I like to think elements of that curiosity and desire to see things off-kilter are still part of my character. Would that be different if getting high was as easy as sitting around the living room watching TV or, as the normalized stoner stock photography would have you believe, just putzing around the house chopping veggies and doing laundry?
I realize there are many important reasons why the legalization of marijuana is a positive step, and I won’t argue against them: reducing the number of poor people serving time or dealing with unfair financial penalties; unwell people using marijuana as medication; perfectly law-abiding adults choosing to get high after a stressful day at work. It’s all on the right side of history, I think. But personally I’ll miss that edge of doing something a tick sideways of normal.
###
Predictably, the bus that runs from Tonkin Field to Orenko Station doesn’t run at this time of night, so we have a strange walk through the burbs ahead of us. I am genuinely stoned at this point, and simple tasks like pulling out my phone, taking a deep breath, and determining the best course of action seem out of scope. We’ll kind of wander toward where we think the station used to be, and in our meandering we’ll find our way home. Never mind that we’re closer to the wide open spaces of North Plains than we are from North Portland.
S stops me after a while. He’s figured out how to use the map on his phone, and it turns out we’re quite a ways down the wrong road and, what’s more, the hulking dark kingdom to our left is Intel world headquarters — half asleep yet still triggered with alarms, gates, windowless buildings, patrol trucks, and god knows what else. We turn in.
At this point I feel genuinely far from home and out of sorts, which I guess is the point of this excursion. That disorienting combo doesn’t happen to me much, so I try my best not to deflect it or cover it up. “Should we try to get picked up?” I ask S as a security guard drives past, partly because that would spell another chapter of our night and partly because it could mean getting home sooner. He shrugs off the idea as he should, and we head deeper into campus.
Intel’s grounds are expansive any time by any measure. Tonight, they are endless. S navigates because I’m still incapable of doing much with my phone or map, and as we head down a particularly dark alleyway I’m overcome with that familiar stoned feeling that we’ve stumbled on the ruins of a fallen empire. What the hell is this place, I think. S must be thinking the same thing. We laugh nervously and keep walking amid the drone of a million unseen cooling fans. The place is manicured down to the last square foot of ground cover, so it’s not the prospect of coming across some wild creature or wandering soul that has us on edge. It’s more like the opposite of that — the feeling that everything is so securely in place that we’re the only bugs in the system. Two Pot Dads bumbling through the belly of the beast after most other Hops fans are safely tucked in. Making adventure for ourselves where there was none. Holding fast to that lozenge dream that has peeled open, for the moment, a mystery even here.
